Who’s on Obama’s 2026 summer reading list? George Saunders, Ann Patchett, Roopika Risam

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

The only Booker-longlisted title on Obama’s list, the novel centers on Artie Dam, a Massachusetts history teacher who seems content in his marriage but is secretly lonely. Strout, known for uncovering the emotional undercurrents in ordinary lives, follows the slow accumulation of grief and the comfort of long friendship.

A World Appears by Michael Pollan

Here Pollan takes a break from food and psychedelics to solve the puzzle of consciousness itself. He surveys competing theories on why subjective experience exists at all by drawing on neuroscience, philosophy, plant biology, and his own experience with altered states. As he speaks to a number of experts, from researchers to AI scientists, and even novelists, Pollan does not settle on one answer.

Whistler by Ann Patchett

One of the most popular books of the year, the Whistler is a meditation on how the briefest of encounters can leave a deep impression. In a chance encounter, the protagonist Daphne Fuller, runs into her former stepfather who had been briefly married to her mother at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This leads to a reflection into the choices they make and the ones that are circumstantial.

The eleven book on Barrack Obama’s Reading List. (Credit barackobama/Instagram)

This Land Is Your Land by Beverly Gage

From Philadelphia’s founding landmarks to Disneyland, the book takes readers, through 13 American historical sites. The Pulitzer-winning historian behind G-Man timed the book to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It is ultimately an argument about the founding ideals of the country with museums, roadside attractions, and reenactments offering an entrypoint.

Vigil by George Saunders

The novel told through the lens of an afterlife “usher” brings us to the deathbed of a ruthless oil executive. This is the first time the usher has met someone unwilling to atone. Asking what an unrepentant life owes the world in its final hours, Saunders uses the premise to take on corporate greed and environmental devastation. As in Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders filters an otherwise serious subject through his playful, off-kilter imagination.

One Sun Only by Camille Bordas

The How to Behave in a Crowd author follows characters navigating burglary, grief, unrequited love, and the blurry line between good art and bad. Her stories, which deal with burglaries, deaths, and diagnoses, are often imbued with dry humour.

Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu

The only debut novel on the list is set against the background of a fictional Massachusetts town, where a false ballistic-missile alert throws residents into 18 minutes of panic. Centered on an Asian American community, the novel follows an ensemble cast whose private choices during the scare—confessions, betrayals, an unforgivable text, a fleeing husband— continue to ripple long after the incident. The book that won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize is inspired by the 2018 false missile alert in Hawaii.

Data Empire by Roopika Risam

Charting an 11,000-year global history of information and power, Data Empire traces how data collection has always been a technology of control since the days of the Mesopotamian clay tablets with grain and land records to colonial censuses and ledgers, and now today’s algorithmic platforms. Risam, Dartmouth professor of postcolonial and digital humanities, argues the first recorded name in human history belonged to an accountant and she builds outward from there to show how empires have long depended on sorting and surveilling people.

Transcription by Ben Lerner

This book, which won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, follows a writer who returns to his college town for what will be the final interview with his elderly mentor, only to lose his recording device. What unfolds is a meditation on memory and technology, and the question whether technology has enhanced or flattened human connection.

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead

Whitehead closes the Harlem Trilogy that began with Harlem Shuffle. It follows a furniture salesman as Reagan-era New York lurches between financial collapse and real-estate-fueled reinvention. Whitehead, a two-time Pulitzer winner, closes the trilogy with his usual mix of crime-novel plotting and social observation.